


darkness hummed

by mywordsflyup



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Depression, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Trespasser, Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:37:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5560213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mywordsflyup/pseuds/mywordsflyup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It should feel like a second chance, but it doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	darkness hummed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Firgolfin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firgolfin/gifts).



> For the tumblr prompt "grief". It turned out a little longer than expected. 
> 
> I always thought my prickly red hunter Lavellan would be the one who'd struggle the most after the events of Trespasser.

They have to take her arm, they tell her. There is nothing they can do. It's fine. She expected as much after the long way back through the eluvians, cradling the useless limb in her other hand. The others saw it as well, how her fingers stayed curled and lifeless. The skin pale and cold to the touch. The place where her mark used to be was a black and ruined mess. A scorched ragged cut that parted her palm and continued over her wrist. It started to rot before they even reached the Winter Palace.

_There is nothing we can do, Your Worship._

It’s fine.

Leliana’s personal healer takes care of her, a tall human woman with steady hands and an easy smile - even as she prepares to put her under.

When she wakes, her arm is gone. What remains is a cleanly bandaged stump, Cullen by her side and the irrevocably sense that it’s finally over.

“How are you feeling?” Cullen leans in and presses his lips against her forehead. The hand with which he pushes back her hair is trembling slightly and he looks more tired than she has seen him since the end of the war.

“I’m fine,” she says, her tongue still sluggish from the sleeping spell. She leans back against the pillows and closes her eyes. Every bone in her body is heavy as stone, every muscle weary. She sinks into darkness, fingers that are no longer there twitching at her side.

 

There are plans to be made and she listens to her friends talk in circles around her. Things have changed, once again. A new threat, a new purpose. Maybe.

“Nothing has changed,” Josephine says, pinching the bridge of her nose and sighing. “If anything, the events of the last few days have made matters worse.”

Cullen frowns. “Surely what happened only served to prove how necessary we still are.”

“Since when do you know so much about the finer points of international politics, Commander?” It’s a childish and petty thing to say but they all see the circles underneath Josephine’s eyes. She hasn’t slept since the start of the Council.

“I just want it done,” Lavellan says and straightens her back to keep herself from prodding at the bandaged rest of her arm. It does not hurt but there is a tingling sensation from time to time that makes her want to press her fingers against the fresh wound.

The others look at her with that mixture of worry and pity that she hates and she looks out of the window to avoid their eyes. “I want it done,” she repeats. “I made plans. For… For all of you. After this.” She takes a deep breath. “But things are different now.”

“Solas needs to be stopped,” Cullen says. “And nobody knows him better than the Inquisition.”

She laughs but it’s a strange and bitter sound. “And we do not know him at all.”

“All the more reason to expand our influence and pool our resources.”

She shakes her head. “No. No more alliances. No more soldiers.” She thinks of another just like her. Who gave his life for the cause and lay forgotten behind a wall of ice until history had twisted his tale beyond recognition. “We are not the Inquisition of old. We are... “ Across the room, she catches Cullen’s eye and he nods stiffly. “We are done. It is time for something new.”

 

They return to Skyhold a month later. No longer the Inquisition but something else. They still call her by the title she does not hold anymore but she doesn’t correct them. Cullen helps her out of the saddle, her limbs stiff and sore. Her balance is off and every step of her horse felt like a battle. She grits her teeth but doesn’t snap when Cullen keeps one hand on the small of her back and the other at her elbow.

In her dreams, nothing has changed. She is ripped apart, bursting at the seams with a power she doesn't want or understand. When she closes her eyes, all she sees is green. The pain is back, like a red-hot iron rammed into her palm. It's eating her and she knows it.

There are voices from the other side. The Fade at her fingertips. At night, they whisper to her like they never did.

_Poor little elf. Poor little hunter. Wasted away, worn down to nothing. It will rip you open. Break your bones and shred your skin. You will become what you fear the most. A tear in the sky. A breach, once more._

She wakes, panting and drenched in sweat. And just for one torturous heartbeat, she can feel her hand, the mark crackling in the silence.

But it’s gone. It’s done. She’s fine.

She does not wake Cullen who looks as peaceful asleep as she has never seen him before, and leaves to walk the battlements. Skyhold sleeps below, just a few fires burning and even fewer soldier patrolling the grounds. The sky is clear and full of stars and she feels like she can breathe, even if just for a little while.

Climbing the ladder to the top of her favorite tower is more difficult now but not impossible. There is a fine layer of sweat on her forehead when she reaches the top and she hugs her cloak tighter around her body in the brisk night air.

The fortress is still hers, technically. Nobody is going to come and take it from her. Somehow she doubts that it would let itself be taken. Skyhold has claimed her as much as she has claimed it. But she knows she cannot stay. Not without an Inquisition. Not without soldiers and mages and guests and refugees to fill its many rooms and halls.

“He led you here. Breathing walls and a beating heart within the mountain. You fear it’s tainted.”

She is not surprised that Cole has found her. He usually does, even if he is not as quiet as he used to be.

“That’s part of it,” she concedes as he climbs on top of the battlements to dangle his legs over the abyss on the other side.

He looks back at her, his eyes as wide and pale as ever. “You’re hurting.”

“I’m fine.”

It takes her a bit longer, still unfamiliar with the new balance and pulling herself up with one arm, but she sits down next to Cole and stares out into the dark valley below.

“I can still hear you screaming,” Cole says. “Like you were screaming at the Winter Palace. Fire in your hand and lightning in your arm. Green light ripping you apart.”

“It’s not anymore,” she says and lifts what is left of her left arm to show him. “It’s just…” She looks for the right term, the one Bull used when he saw her without her arm for the first time. “Phantom pain.”

“You thought you would die.”

Ah, there it is. She should have known that she wouldn’t be able to hide it from Cole.

“I did.” There is no point in lying.

It should feel like a second chance, shouldn’t it? A new life for her. For Cullen. For everyone. For months she lay awake at night, focusing on the pain in her hand. A dull pressure at first, flaring up with every heartbeat. And later, fire. Consuming her, following her into her dreams. She lay in bed and knew she was going to die.

And now?

Now she’s fine.

“I feel like I have outstayed my welcome,” she says to the darkness as much as to Cole.

“You have not. They are happy you are alive. They were afraid before but now they can breathe again.”

“I know,” she says, remembering Cullen’s hand in hers. The tears in his eyes when she woke after they had cut off the arm. Relief so plain on his face. “There is still much to do now.”

There is a rustling sound next to her as Cole turns to her. “That is not why they are happy.”

“I know,” she says and feels ungrateful. With a sigh, she climbs back down to the solid floorboards and feels like she could sink right through them. Down, down, down until the mountain swallows her whole.

 

Her hair is becoming a problem and it's the first time since she stumbled out of the eluvian at the Winter Palace that she actually misses her arm. There are only so many things one can do without a second hand and the intricate braids of the Dalish are not one of them. Through the years, this is what she kept from home. Wild hair and braids ending in beads and charms. She did it herself, every morning. Without the hands of the clan it wasn’t the same. But it was close.

Now, she can do nothing but stare at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair falling over her shoulders in auburn waves, soft and brushed. She doesn’t look like herself.

She sees Cullen sitting on the bed behind her, the expression on his face wary. He worries and she hates it. Hates him for it, just a little bit. And that only makes it worse. “I can try braiding it for you again, if you want.”

She shakes her head at his reflection. He tries but something about it is not quite right. So they usually settle for a large plait down her back. Practical but painfully human to her.

“No,” she says and her eyes find themselves in the mirror. “I want…” What does she want? Life, she thinks. Silence, just for a moment. The peace she was promised years ago. To move and to be moved. To sleep for a thousand years and wake up as someone new. She wants it all. She wants none of it. “I want you to cut it off.”

He makes a shocked noise and she turns around to face him. “Cut it off? Truly?” He is distressed by the thought just like she thought he would be. He loves her hair. She does not fault him for the desire to keep it.

“Yes,” is all she says and in the end, he does it.

There is a sea of auburn at her feet and her head feels lighter somehow. She presses her fingers against her lips to keep the laughter that’s been bubbling up inside her from bursting out. Cullen looks worried, still standing behind her with the dagger in his hand.

It’s wild and uneven and Vivienne would die right on the spot if she ever saw it but Lavellan’s eyes roam over her reflection. The woman sitting right in front of her. New and different and unburdened. Broken and remade.

“I somehow thought I would be less afterwards,” she says. “I don’t know why.”

Cullen steps forward and cups her jaw with one hand from behind. He leans down to press his lips against the new short locks at the crown of her head. “You could never be less.”

She reaches up to grasp his hand and holds it tight against her collarbone. When he looks at her like that, she can make herself believe it.

 

She sleeps with him that night, for the first time since they left for the Exalted Council.

(She still remembers the way his laugh sounded in her ear as he took her in their tent, just a day’s ride from Halamshiral. She climbed into his lap, just a little tipsy from the wine and more than a little from the elfroot she took to keep the pain at bay.

“Take me here,” she said with her fingers stroking his cock and her teeth at his throat. “On the forest floor. I cannot stand those soft Orlesian beds.”

And he laughed, delighted and surprised. But in the end, he did. Until she saw and tasted nothing but him. No pain, no Council, no fear. Just Cullen and his hands and his lips and the sound of blood rushing in her ears.)

Now, with his head between her thighs and his hands holding her down so she won’t float away, she breaks apart like waves crashing onto shore. He coaxes her, endlessly gentle, up up up and over the edge. He carries her through it until it’s too much and she pulls him up towards her. When he kisses her she tastes herself and her own tears. He swipes his thumb over her cheek, the worry on his face visible even in the low light of the candles.

“Are you alright?”

She reaches up to brush her fingers against his face and he leans into her touch. “I’m fi-” She stops herself, the word dying on her tongue. “Better. Better now.” It’s a start.

He settles back into the pillows and pulls her close until her head rests on his shoulder. It’s the kind of silence she craved, heavy and tired and content. The tight knot inside her chest in gone, at least for the moment. With Cullen’s body underneath her, warm and solid, she can almost make herself believe that it’s gone for good.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Hozier's "In The Woods Somewhere".
> 
> You can also follow my [tumblr](http://damnable-rogue.tumblr.com) if you're interested.


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